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Greenpeace is calling on LEGO to end its partnership with Shell, to Save the Arctic
[See the full post at: Shell and LEGO: Everything is Not Awesome]Lego makes awesome toys. But it being made from plastic, they should do everything in their power (of which they do have a good amount) to make it as environmentally sustainable as possible.?
Though I agree with the thrust of Shell needing a good dollop of condemnation and scorn thrown at them for c0cking up the drilling operations, I fail to comprehend the logic of targeting Lego when they could more easily target Shell petrol stations!
Yeah, Lego uses plastic. And…? I’d bet there’s no less plastic in my Fluence than I’ve ever bought my kids, and they have buckets of the stuff!
Even as EV drivers, there are other ways our own demands put demands on others to burn ICE fuels in their vehicles. %age wise, very few in our society are free of some degree of criticism in driving oil companies into further reaches of the far flung corners of the earth in search of its resources.
I don’t know enough about Lego and Shell’s relationship to comment much, but Shell made a balls up but that was aggravated by a lazy administration that let them get away with it. Let’s go target McDonalds for being ‘American’, because they were the ones that were asleep at this wheel while Shell played merry hell in the Arctic.
Just my POV.
There’s a specific issue at hand – Lego has a long-term relationship with Shell that comes up for renewal this year. The current deal is that Lego sets are given away at Shell petrol stations, with Shell logos on the Lego.
HM Gov screwed up by invading Iraq (amongst many other things), but that doesn’t mean I declined to use their services and refused to accept child benefit payments from them. Same way Shell screwed up but that doesn’t mean I will decline using dino-blood in my ICE and refuse free Lego gifts when buying the evil stuff.
I struggle to picture Shell as [i]necessarily[/i] being the worst offender here. It is a for-profit company so it is their corporate duty to their shareholders to use as little money when conducting their field operations as they can get away with. So if the regulators let it get away with a half-arzd approach to safety and environmental security in a drilling programme that nearly ended in disaster, then who was it that really failed to perform their duties?
Just like Gov, I think Shell get some things right, just not everything, both in some of their background research activities, and also in customer service delivery. In UK we generally have pretty good fuel stations everywhere, but driving across EU I’ll tend to drop into Shell stations as they are usually well maintained, clean, well-stocked, etc., while the rest I find are truly shocking at worst (sufficient that I just don’t bother stopping!!) or just very inconsistent for the other big chains.
I disagree in that I believe corporations have a responsibility to minimise the harm they cause – in other words they shouldn’t just do what they can get away with, but have some social responsility beyond that. Other oil companies believe that drilling in the Arctic cannot currently be carried out safely. Shell’s incompetence in their attempts so far have confirmed this view. Therefore Shell are wrong to continue their attempts in the same way – they are putting themselvs out on a limb, no-one is making them. They are simply balancing potential profits against the public good in a more extreme way than other oil companies.
@donald I know this is going off topic a bit but the fact that a company has an obligation to its share holders to make as much profit is the crux of the problem for me. Companies should exist to offer services to benefit humanity, not to make a few people rich. If that happens as a side effect, so be it, but the goals should be to deliver valuable services.
I believe corporations have a responsibility to minimise the harm they cause – in other words they shouldn’t just do what they can get away with, but have some social responsility beyond that.
the fact that a company has an obligation to its share holders to make as much profit is the crux of the problem for me. Companies should exist to offer services to benefit humanity, not to make a few people rich.
I agree they should have responsibility, and I agree there should be some compulsion towards minimum community benefits.
But they don’t.
All I am saying is that they could be compelled to do so, but they aren’t. Who could compel them?
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